The recent furor over the nomination and confirmation of Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh puts us in mind of a messy truth for companies and businesspeople who must deal with investigations and charges of all stripes, whether as the investigator (in conducting a corporate internal investigation, for example) or as the subject of the charges (a grand jury investigation, or a regulatory enforcement action, or at trial). In order to create workable compliance programs; to advance a corporate culture the way we wish to; or to defend a company or its executives or employees, we need to come to terms with with a truth not so much “un-American” as “a-American,”…

Deputy Attorney General Yates Unless you have been on a monastic retreat or hidden as carefully as Hillary Clinton’s email server, you have by now likely read reports and analyses of the “Yates Memorandum,” a policy document issued by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates entitled “Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing.” (Here is the document: Yates-Memo-Prosecution-of-Individuals.pdf ). In this essay, I focus on one particular aspect that may be crucial for companies, their boards of directors, their audit committees and law department: The timing of potential disclosures to the Government and the degree to which outside counsel needs to have comfort that what he or she is relating to the Government…

Title IX. Crime. Sexual assault. University disciplinary procedures. Civil litigation. Enormous amounts of money. The Fifth Amendment. And that’s all before you hire a lawyer. This is a perilous time for university disciplinary systems and those who administer them, especially with regard to claims of sexual assault. A college or university can find itself in the midst of – indeed, at the helm of – a set of quasi-criminal parallel proceedings that can make the school liable to student complainants, student respondents and federal enforcement authorities. How does this happen, and what are the factors to keep in mind to minimize that exposure? Disciplinary systems and educational missions have been…

In a recent post, we touched on the importance of the D.C. Circuit’s decision in KBR concerning privilege and internal investigations: Post-recession, we are living through an era of regulators’ grimaces and prosecutors’ giddiness. Editorialists and bloggers want business scalps, especially scalps of individuals (as opposed to simple monetary fines for corporations), and most especially scalps of those in banking and finance. In the wake of the GM report and other stories about lawyers, the role of business lawyers is as suspect in the public mind as it has been for decades. It’s as though everybody smells a rat. On the other hand, faced with ever-increasing and increasingly complex regulation, companies’ need…

Post-recession, we are living through an era of regulators’ grimaces and prosecutors’ giddiness. Editorialists and bloggers want business scalps, especially scalps of individuals (as opposed to simple monetary fines for corporations), and most especially scalps of those in banking and finance. In the wake of the GM report and other stories about lawyers, the role of business lawyers is as suspect in the public mind as it has been for decades. It’s as though everybody smells a rat. On the other hand, faced with ever-increasing and increasingly complex regulation, companies’ need to conduct self-reviews and internal investigations is unavoidable. Indeed, in many industries, the governing set of rules require companies to…

The GM internal-investigation report about ignition-switch problems raises a host of issues, one of which is its unusually sharp criticism of GM internal lawyers. Criticism of lawyers is nothing new, of course. Lawyer-jokes always blame lawyers; lawyers’ spouses frequently blame lawyers; clients sometimes blame lawyers. But public reports drafted by lawyers infrequently blame lawyers, so this one merits attention, most especially by internal lawyers in large organizations; by the outside counsel who serve them; and by the businesspeople who are the true clients. What are the key takeaways? The Normal, Uneasy. Skim the report. (Just skim it — it’s too long to read cover to cover without heroin. If…